


sight of the sun

by heavyliesthecrown



Series: book of love [4]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic, F/M, Fluffy Angst, Future Fic, Parenthood, betty worries about being a mom even though she's good at it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 02:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17174438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavyliesthecrown/pseuds/heavyliesthecrown
Summary: The connection, she’s read in the books and the blogs, is so often instantaneous. The sound of a cry, or a simple touch, and that bond is there - stronger than flame or fire, unbreakable and unshakeable. But for her, it doesn’t come so easily.Or - in a name that belongs to so many others, she wonders how she’s supposed to make that three-letter-word her own.





	sight of the sun

**Author's Note:**

> A very special thank you to bugggghead for beta’ing this during the holidays. She’s a superstar and I’m so grateful for her help.

 

_What’s in a name?_

_That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet._

 

Her daughter is born in the earliest hours of the morning, on the first day of autumn, and with her mouth resembling a misshapen rubber band.

She enters the world screeching and wailing like there’s no tomorrow, and that, Betty supposes, is where the disquiet begins – in the loudness of it all.

In the swirling vortex of her very own screeching and wailing, the steady, nervous voice speaks right in her ear, telling her over and over again that he loves her, that he’s there for her, and of all things, that he’s _sorry_. With the inane squawking from doctors and midwives and nurses crowding and fluttering around her – she misses the one sound she’d wanted to hear most.

It registers with her eventually when the ringing stops and the air clears, and in her head, Betty knows that she hasn’t missed much. Seconds, maybe, if that; milliseconds is really more accurate.

But she misses it - the sound she’d dreamt of and anticipated actively for two hundred and fifty-two days and inactively, for so much of her life. The sound she’d promised herself she’d train and turn her ear to from the very instant it first broke into the world.

“She’s beautiful, Betty,” she hears him say, words muffled as he sloppily presses his lips to her damp forehead, and when he does, she’s somehow vaguely aware that her ponytail has inched its way from the center of her head all the way to the side. “She has your chin.”

She lets go of his hand then, and for a moment, she thinks about apologizing for the good old college try she’s taken at fusing his knuckles together; he needs those hands to type, after all. But she knows what he’ll say - that his pain is small potatoes compared to hers - and so she doesn’t.

Instead, she uses her newly freed hands to reach out to the open air in search of the sound, waiting for the swaddled, pinched-face bundle already coming her way.

And just like that, the unseen little person who already has a personality - who likes to kick to the beat when Henry Mancini comes on shuffle and who’s never given her morning sickness because she likes to stay sedentary until noon - is finally a person she gets to meet.

“Hi,” Betty whispers, tired arms folding clumsily and awkwardly around the screaming bundle. She hadn’t expected her face to be so red. Betty supposes that it’s okay for her to cry because it’s such a brand new world she’s facing right now; it is for all of them, really - a brave and very brand new world - but she does her best to rock her, gently bouncing the bundle in soft side-to-side motions, just like she’s read.

She doesn’t want to miss another moment of any firsts that might happen right now - any waving fists or wobbling mouths - but quickly, she flicks her eyes to his. He’s part of the moment, too, a huge part of the moment.

She’s seen him cry only a handful of times, the majority of which they’d been under age ten. But as his hand finds its way over to their daughter’s head, wobbling and shaking through the entire journey, she catches the sheen of liquid glass over his eyes before tracking over his cheekbones.

He opens his mouth before closing it just as quickly, settling on shaking his head instead, a movement that falls somewhere between wonderment and disbelief. There’s some kind of irony in there, she finds herself thinking fleetingly through the haze of the moment - the man of a thousand and one words silenced by something weighing six pounds and eight ounces; something so small.

And yet, so majestically monumental, too.

“Hi there,” Betty whispers again, juggling the bundle in her arms. She blinks quickly and furiously, wondering if her own tears are merely hidden somewhere in the depths of her eyes. “I’m your mother.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees the whisper of his confusion, but it’s only there for a moment.

 

* * *

 

They name her Juliet.

They’ve had the name ready for a few months now, but when the baby is cleaned and given a new, hospital-issued pink hat that she’ll swap out for the one they bought her later, and when they’re both diapered - her in mesh underwear and a pad the likes of which she’s never seen before, and the baby in tiny Pampers - the nurses come by to make it official.

 _Juliet_ , Betty reminds herself when they do. She’s not the baby, or the bump moonlighting a makeshift table for a jar of Peter Pan and Ritz crackers; she’s not the thing rolling around on her bladder anymore, always around four in the afternoon. She’s her daughter, Juliet.

“Name?” the nurse asks them both before peering over at the bundle he’s bouncing in his arms with a kind fondness.

He doesn’t look completely natural at it yet, but she can tell he’s getting there. It’s a little unpracticed, the way he’s rocking her, his movements slightly rough and jerky, but she - _Juliet_ \- is quiet. And that, Betty thinks, must mean at least in some way that he’s doing a fine job.

She’s always known that he would. She knows he doesn’t, but she’s never had her doubts.

Betty wonders how she looks with Juliet in her own arms. A natural?

Or more like an imposter?

“Juliet,” Jughead offers, but more so to the baby than the nurse, a careful finger tapping at the button of her nose. “Her name is Juliet.”

 _That’s you,_ she thinks he’s telling her.

“And your name?” the nurse continues. “I have here-”

“Forsythe Pendleton,” Jughead says before spelling it out, and Betty thinks it might be the first and only time she’s ever heard him say it without hesitation. He’s still sniffling, she notes. He’s been sniffling for the last hour.

And then, there’s her - the impenetrable wall with the dry tear ducts.

“Pendleton’s his middle name,” she adds in quickly when the woman bends back over her clipboard. “And he’s the third. And I’m Elizabeth, not Betty.”

There’s a strange catch in her throat as she voices the words - _not Betty._ In her heart, she knows that she is, but for birth certificate purposes, she’s Elizabeth. And it’s an odd feeling to come to terms with - that on their daughter’s first, important piece of paper in this world, she’s going by a name she feels like has never really been hers.

“I know,” the nurse tells her gently. “We have all that right here.”

When the nurse clicks her pen and shuffles out the door, clipboard in hand and cooing at Juliet along the way, Betty protests, waving her arms up wildly over her head.

“Wait. Wait! Don’t we need those? I thought we’d have to mail them out.”

The nurse clucks at her; she’s heard this question one too many times, Betty gathers.

“We can do that for you, dear,” she’s told. “You just spend your time getting to know her. We’ll take care of this.”

Then, it’s just them alone in the room again.

Her husband.

Her child.

She’s never been scared by words before. She’s always reveled in them - they’ve been her sword and shield all her life. But those two words, the ones she’s been turning over and over in her head, that keep taking on new meaning and significance, begin to feel heavy.

He’s been her husband for a little over two years, but it hasn’t felt all that different until now - instead of calling him her boyfriend at the annual holiday party or that one time she was on the phone with the insurance company for five hours, she calls him her husband, and that’d been that. Attaching a new name to him hadn’t been that jarring to her because he’d still been just Jughead - with a thin silver band around his fourth finger now - but still just the man who can put away a whole pizza and still feel the need to roam the kitchen in a peckish graze after, the same man who rubs warmth back into her feet when she sticks them under his legs during the winter, taking the cold from her toes into his fingers.

But this is different.

She knows Juliet, this little person in her arms that she’s been connected to from the very first moments of her existence; no one else in this world can say the same. She knows what it feels like to have this person grow, and she knows what it feels like when she puts weight behind her foot and kicks, letting the world know that she’s a force to be reckoned with.

And yet, she also doesn’t know the baby in her arms. In so many ways, this person that they’ve given life to is a perfect stranger. She’s an entirely new face - one she’s thought about and imagined for so much of her life, one that she’s been waiting for this day to finally see. She’s an entirely new person, someone she’s only met today in the flesh for the very first time. Today, Juliet is real and a presence in the world, a force with healthy lungs to be reckoned with, and unlike Jughead, who she’s known for so much of her life, Juliet is someone who she’ll slowly learn and get to know.

She’s her daughter, her flesh and blood, someone who couldn’t be more her, and yet, a stranger in so many ways, too.

“You okay?” Jughead asks, moving to sit beside her but only on the very edge of her bed. “I mean, besides the obvious.”

“Yeah,” Betty says, shaking her head as she holds out her arms, carefully cupping Juliet’s head as he shifts her over. They’ll have to practice that, too, she supposes because that handoff was in no way smooth.

“Do you need anything? Another pillow? More blankets? If it’s too cold in here, I can ask-”

“Jug,” she interrupts gently. “I’m fine.”

“There’s nothing you want? A Slim Jim? You were talking about those earlier.”

Likely in her pre-epidural ramblings, ones she has absolutely no recollection of.

“Actually, can you get me some ice chips?”

“I’m pretty sure you can have water now,” he says, although she doesn’t think he sounds particularly sure at all. “I can ask.”

Betty shrugs. “I like the ice chips.”

He kisses her forehead then, mumbling something about them not having too much fun while he’s gone, and all she can think is that it feels a little early for him to start rolling out the dad-jokes.

But then again, Betty thinks - he _is_ a dad now.

And she’s a mom.

Mother? Mom?

Betty looks down to the bundle still snoozing away gently in her arms; she’s a good sleeper, Betty thinks - like Jughead.

As the door to the hospital room swings shut - quietly, because he remembers to rest the weight of his arm against the door to prevent the inevitable slam, she wonders what else about Juliet is like Jughead.

She wonders what about Juliet is like her.

 

* * *

 

Betty had never imagined that someone so small could have such a weighty, tangible presence in a space, but it’s a wonderful thing, she thinks, that her daughter has such command of the room, even as she sleeps in her arms.

And, it’s a completely intimidating thing, to not only be completely responsible for another person’s life, but to also make sure that the person feels love, too, that she feels safe and warm and happy.

“Hi,” Betty tries again. She was tired before and in no state of mind to make the introduction she’d really wanted to. “You’re Juliet,” she says, bouncing the bundle in her arms as she says the name. “That’s the name we picked out for you. I hope you like it. I tried to think of all the nicknames that the kids on the playground would come up with, and I don’t think there’s anything too terrible in there. At least, nothing like your dad’s.” She smiles when the word falls from her mouth with ease; if she can say that one, the corollary should come just fine, too.

Betty closes her eyes as she inhales, and lets the words tumble from her as honestly as possible.

“I’m your mother.”

Sighing, she tips her head back onto her pillow in frustration.

She thinks about her own conception and understanding of the word - mom. To her, it belongs to one person in this world, the woman who’s now driving down from the town she’d grown up in, likely wearing nude colored pumps and a twin set.

Betty loves her mother, and they’ve come a long way - they butt heads less, they agree on more now. It’s something that she’s always known - that she’d need to move out of her mother’s house to truly understand the woman, that she’d need to put distance between them to feel closer to her.

But the way she and her mom are and operate, isn’t at all what she wants for her and Juliet.

 _What’s in a name,_ she’d asked herself over and over as she tossed and turned, as his hand gently patted her rounded stomach in a half-hearted attempt to get her to go to sleep.

There’s history to Juliet, a morbid, doomed kind of history that she’d thought her daughter would be much better off without. But there’s also memory attached to it, fond and truly sweet memories that had emerged from the dark parts of her history - a bright spot in an otherwise confusing and chaotic world filled with far too many hormones and even more tears.

But at the end of the day, with Shakespeare's complete works sitting open on her lap under the bright glow of her phone’s flashlight, she’d realized that in _this_ story, Romeo isn’t Romeo call’d - he’s just Jughead. And she’s just Betty.

And Juliet, even with all that history and all those memories she attaches to it, is just a name - one that she’d like her daughter to take and make completely her own.

So, with a hand on his shoulder, she’d shaken him awake.

And when that hadn’t worked, she’d very lightly dropped the book of Shakespeare on his arm.

“What?” Jughead had asked, sitting up quickly, sending the book tumbling down towards the ground. “Betty, what?”

“I like Juliet.” She’d caught the flash of his smile in the darkness, and that had been that.

She’d thought long and hard about Juliet’s name and done her utmost to give it every possible consideration she could. She thought about how it might feel to say that name, to use it to present herself to the world - _I am Juliet Jones_ , her daughter would one day say. She thought about what it all would mean.

And maybe, that’s part of why she’s feeling this way now, this strange, out-of-body sensation she has when she looks down at her arms, surprised and taken aback each time she sees a baby there - a real, living and breathing baby, and not a pile of books or groceries or laundry.

She’d spent so long mulling over Juliet’s name that she’d never really given much mind to the new one she’d be taking on herself.

It isn’t that she thinks there’s anything wrong with her, because she feels what she thinks she’s supposed to feel. It’s overwhelming in a way that makes her want to throw the threadbare blankets over her head and hide from the depth of every emotion she feels for the little bundle in her arms.

She loves Juliet, so completely and so wholly, and in a way she’s never loved anyone before. It’s been an hour, maybe closer to two since she’s met her, but she will die for her, Betty knows without a doubt - now it’s her daughter’s life before her own. She will protect her with every shard of fight and fury she has in her, she will walk hot coals with her bare feet, she will endure and she will feel pain if that means there’s even a chance that leads to Juliet feeling safe and happy.

She will be a warrior for Juliet - she will protect and defend her with her body as her daughter’s armor.

She will be her mother - she will love her unconditionally, no matter who her daughter wants to be, no matter who she _will_ be.

And, she will be her mom - she doesn’t know how and she doesn’t know what that’ll feel like yet, but she will.

“How do I be good to you?” Betty whispers, gingerly lifting Juliet’s little hand and peering down to the slight curve of her fingers. “How do I do this right?”

 

* * *

 

When Jughead returns with her ice chips, he looks different to her, even without Juliet nestled in his arms.

“You can come in, you know,” Betty jokes when he pauses at the door, one hand lingering on the handle as he looks over at her - them - a new kind of softness setting in across his face.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head like she’s jolted him out of whatever world he’d been stuck in. “I just - It’s like looking at the sun. You two there like that.”

“Is it?” Betty asks, nose scrunching. “You aren’t really supposed to be looking at the sun, you know. It’s bad for your eyes.”

With a tip of her head, she gestures him closer in an invitation to take up a little more than the sliver of bed he’s sitting on now. “The moon, then,” he says. “Or something else just as beautiful. My metaphors aren’t great right now.”

“Similes, Jug,” she corrects, feeling the tiredness in her own smile.

When he holds the cup of ice chips out to her, Betty frowns. She knows she has enough strength in her to hold Juliet up with one arm just fine - the baby has her head firmly tucked into the crook of her right elbow, and the rest of her little torso lined up with the length of her arm. But she’s so new at this, and all it’d take is one moment for Juliet to roll right off and onto the floor.

Betty sticks her tongue out as she ducks her head down to the cup, guiding an ice chip to the edge of the styrofoam before lapping it up, completely ungracefully.

“You know, you could’ve just asked,” Jughead says, waggling an ice chip at her before popping it into his mouth as she raises her head back up. “I have hands.”

“I know,” Betty says. “I just - I didn’t want to let go.”

He’s sympathetic when he looks over at her, tired eyes brushed over with understanding as he lays a gentle hand over the back of her head. “Here,” Jughead says, setting down the cup of ice chips before gesturing for Juliet. “Ice chips are meant to be enjoyed, Betty. Hospital delicacy and all that.”

She twists, maybe a little farther than she needs to in preparation for the handoff, and winces when she feels the entire lower half of her body protest the motion. But she ignores it to focus, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she lays Juliet’s head in his hands, gently tugging them away only when she feels the strength of his grip taking control.

Juliet looks smaller like that, Betty thinks, marveling at the way her daughter’s head fits entirely within the cradle of his palm.

Tipping back slightly against the bed as she rolls an ice chip around her mouth, she allows herself to look a the whole picture - the tilt of his shoulders as he holds their daughter, the angle and bend of his arm, the curve of his fingers.

She’s never been one of those women that melts at the sight of any man holding a baby, but he’s always been her exception.

 

* * *

 

Veronica cries openly and loudly into what might be the largest bouquet of flowers she’s ever received in her life. Archie cries, too, but less so at the baby, Betty thinks, and more at the sight of his best friend, the very same one that used to sleep curled up on an air mattress on his floor, now wearing one of the most brilliant smiles she’s ever seen on him as he tells their oldest friend there’s someone he wants him to meet.

“Why didn’t you call us earlier?” Veronica asks, leaning over and tipping from right to left as she observes Juliet in Jughead’s arms from all angles.

“Oh,” Betty begins, “you wouldn’t have wanted to be here for it. You’d have been waiting for hours, V.”

Truthfully, she’d wanted the moment to stay within her little family, at least for a little while. She’d wanted a moment to see Juliet without the rest of her world outside her door waiting to see her too, to see Jughead holding her without anyone looking over his shoulder like they’re doing now.

And, she hadn’t wanted Veronica, and moreover, Archie, seeing her with her feet in stirrups while her doctors and nurses threw around words like _dilation_ and _cervix_ with reckless abandon. She really didn’t need them picturing any of that, let alone accidentally seeing it.

“Jug,” she says, tilting her head over at Veronica and Archie, and at the reminder, he holds Juliet out to Veronica, who quickly shoves the bouquet of flowers into Archie’s chest in anticipation of something much better.

Betty doesn’t know if she’s ever seen Veronica around children before, let alone holding a newborn, but were she a stranger to her best friend, she’d never know that from what she’s seeing now. Veronica looks comfortable as her wool-covered arms easily cradle Juliet, hand instinctively sliding under her little head, and fingers gently tapping at the baby’s bottom.

Then, there’s Archie, clutching the life out of the flowers, shoulders tense and stiff, looking apprehensive and wide-eyed at just about everything.

Betty gets it. If she has to match herself to Archie or Veronica right now, she thinks she’d have to go with the former.

“Don’t be like your father,” she hears Veronica tell Juliet, voice warm through her wet smile. “Switch out your hats every now and then. Aunt Veronica can help you with that.”

 

* * *

 

His sister cries, too.

Jughead uses the sun as his guide - his eager hands reach for his phone only when it blooms and bridges over the horizon, just barely visible through the hospital room’s dingy window.

And seven rings later, they’re greeted with JB’s voice, in all its grumpy morning glory.

“Jug, _what?_ It’s six. In the morning, I might add.”

“FaceTime?” he asks simply, and because JB’s always been quick to catch on, she starts wailing then and there.

Betty holds back a laugh at the quick glimpse of the shirtless man she catches lying face down with his arm hanging over the edge of the bed as the phone’s screen lights up with the image of JB, ungracefully rolling off a tangle of sheets to her feet, wearing a mop of very messy hair and a red, tear-stained face.

“Let me see her,” JB instructs firmly, and through a series of heavy stomps and dull crashes, Betty gathers that JB is in the midst of fumbling her way towards the dining table or couch.

“That’s her?” she asks.

“No, that’s someone else’s kid,” Jughead jokes, and Betty is glad when she hears that. Being a parent changes you, she’s been told, but his tendency to turn to sarcasm with those he loves and knows well is something she loves deeply about him; she always has.

She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to lose that part of him and she’s so glad that it’s still there.

“Yeah, JB,” Jughead says after a beat, holding the phone up over the baby’s sleeping face, tilting and angling the camera as he does, “that’s Juliet.”

Betty watches as JB’s grainy face crumples at the name, nose scrunching and mouth twisting into the exact shape Juliet’s had when she’d first held the swaddled bundle and felt the weight of her daughter in her arms for the first time.

 _That must mean she has Jughead’s mouth_. She’d thought Juliet’s mouth looked more like hers than his, but this seems like pretty clear evidence to the contrary.

When JB’s wails subside to light hiccups, Betty answers the questions that she’s sure she’s going to get a hundred more times with as much of a smile as she can drum up - she feeling tired but she’s doing okay overall, and it feels unusual to be a mother; it feels entirely new, but it’s exciting, too.

“She’s beautiful, guys,” JB says. “Thanks for making me an aunt. I’ll be out to see her soon - promise.”

Then, it’s just the three of them in the room again.

“Was that the same boyfriend we met this summer?” Jughead asks, rising slightly to pocket his phone before scooting back onto the sliver of hospital bed she’s left on reserve for him.

“Who?” she returns, voice rising high in feigned innocence.

“The half-naked man in my sister’s bed.”

“Oh. Him,” Betty says slowly. “I didn’t know you saw that.”

“Mmm.”

“He’s, uh - I couldn’t tell.”

“He’s not, is he,” Jughead says, a statement more than a question.

“Sorry,” she admits, reaching over and squeezing his knee in sympathy.

“Damn,” he says. “I liked the last one. I’d rather you not date until you’re well into your thirties,” Jughead says, voice turning soft and smooth as he looks down at Juliet.

It’s still so strange, Betty thinks, the moments that rip her from the little bubble of a world surrounding her uncomfortable hospital bed and that toss her back into reality when she hears versions of the words her father had once spoken to her and Polly now coming out of his mouth, in his voice.

“It’s not like we have much of a leg to stand on there,” Betty points out. “We were what, sixteen? Fifteen?”

“Fifteen,” he says, hand drawing up her back slowly before coming to rest gently on the back of her neck. On instinct, she feels her head loll back into the cradle of his fingers as he begins to rub slow, steady circles there. “A terrifying thought.”

She laughs, quietly so that the movement doesn’t rattle Juliet, and wonders - not fleetingly enough - if it’s okay that the laughter comes so easily to her when the tears that seem to come so naturally to everyone else, don’t.

 

* * *

 

Her mother stays with them on the pull-out couch for a week.

Betty can’t even complain about it, because she’d asked her to months ago. Back then, she’d figured that all the help she could get at this point would be welcome.

But when her mother starts fluttering around her, waving cold compresses for her breasts and insisting that Juliet’s feet need to be touching something while she’s nursing because _‘it’s the only way I could get you to latch, Elizabeth,'_ Betty starts rethinking the whole thing.

She’s learned far too much about herself and her own habits as a newborn this past week.

Towards the tail end of the week, Betty wakes not quite knowing what day it is, or if it’s morning or night. The curtains are drawn and it’s dark in their room, but it could just as easily be midday with the sun hanging high overhead for all she knows.

Jughead is sleeping next to her, with one arm tucked under his pillow and his fingers loosely resting on her knuckles, and even though Betty knows precious little will wake him right now, she still rolls out of bed with as little fanfare as she can manage.

She’s one foot out the door before she remembers to grab the sweater off the floor and tug it over her head. If it were just Jughead and Juliet waiting out there for her, she wouldn’t mind wandering out into the living room in her old college t-shirt and a pair of sleep shorts.

But her mother doesn’t appreciate or approve of soft clothing in the house, and it’s just easier to wear something halfway presentable rather than have that conversation again, the one that goes something along the lines of putting on a presentable outfit shows pride in one’s own home.

In the living room, overrun with boxes of Pampers they’d bought at Costco but still haven’t found the room for yet, toys Juliet won’t show an interest in for at least another few months, and her hospital bag that she’d really just ought to carve out five minutes for and unpack, Betty sees her mother sitting primly on the couch, knitting on her lap, and Juliet in front of her.

 _So many things for such a little person,_ she muses to herself, smiling as she peeks over the edges of the bassinet.

“Jughead’s sleeping,” her mother tells her quietly, as if she hadn’t just woken up next to the man.

Then again, perhaps in her mother’s mind, she hasn’t, and Jughead’s been snoozing away on the hardwood in their room all these years.

“I know, mom,” she says, cracking her back out as she sits down.

“Juliet woke up every time he tried to put her down. He was up all night with her.”

“I know,” Betty repeats, even though she hadn’t known any such thing - she’d thought he’d gone to sleep after the last feeding. All she knows is that somewhere between hour one and whatever today is, Juliet has developed the lovely little habit of shrieking like a bloodhound if she’s put down to sleep and not held. So, they’ve been holding her.

 _You high-maintenance little thing,_ she thinks fondly, reaching over and running her finger down Juliet’s cheek.

“He’s good with her.”

This time, she smiles; with her mother, the third time has always been the charm. “I know, Mom.”

“Are you hungry? If you are, there’s pasta in the-”

“Mom,” Betty interrupts, drawing her legs up onto the couch and hugging her arms around her knees. “I’m fine. Let’s just - sit for a bit.”

Her mother looks at her with a set of narrowed eyes Betty knows far too well - the eyes that want to argue with her and that don’t quite believe her no matter how earnest she’s being.

“If you want,” she relents eventually.

Betty shifts slightly so she’s tilted towards her mother and her very pink knitting.

“Mom?” she starts quietly, wheeling the bassinet gently towards her. She’s feeling a little far from Juliet now. “Can I ask you something?”

The knitting in her mom’s hands slowly falls to her lap, and that, Betty supposes, is her go-ahead.

“When did you start feeling like a mom?” Betty asks quietly.

When her mother frowns, Betty notices a crack in her lipstick. She truly doesn’t understand why Alice Cooper feels the need to wear lipstick in the house with absolutely no one to see her or put it on for, but it’s one of those things about the woman she thinks she’ll just have to go without understanding. “I’m not sure I understand, Elizabeth.”

And in a way, she isn’t surprised. Third time, Betty reminds herself - they have to work at it more than she suspects other mothers and daughters do out there, but they’ll get there eventually.

“All these books talk about this… this instant bond,” she says, quickly patting her fingers against Juliet’s leg when she stirs. “Did you feel one? Was it when Polly called you mom? When I did?” Betty continues. “Before that? After? The first time you changed my diapers? The first time I threw up on you? There must have been a moment, right? One moment where you really just _felt_ it; where it just hit you like a bus that you’re this tiny person’s mom. Is there that feeling? Am I making this up? Should I not be expecting it?”

She’s breathless by the end of her ramble, and Betty supposes it’s to be expected that her mother looks at her like she’s lost it a little. But she also appreciates the effort she’s making in trying to contain that expression, too.

“I suppose it was when I first held Polly,” her mother says eventually. “And the first time I held you. It’s the only times I really remember your father’s voice not annoying me, you know. But in that moment, I remember thinking that nothing could ever matter as much as you and your sister.”

“Oh,” Betty says. She can hear the disappointment in her own voice.

That moment has come and gone for her.

“Did you cry?” she asks.

“I sure did, Betty. Your father did, too.”

“Oh,” Betty says again. She’s never been much of a crier, but it doesn’t seem right that she wasn’t moved to tears in a moment where her formidable rock of a mother had been. “I didn’t. Do you think it’s okay that I didn’t?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know,” she answers slowly, and truly, she doesn’t. She has no idea why she’s so hung up on this insignificant detail. If anything, it should come as welcome news - there isn’t much that she shares in common with Alice Cooper, and if her goal is to be very much unlike her mother when it comes to parenting, perhaps it’s a good thing that they diverge this early on.

 _But still,_ Betty thinks. _But still - it doesn’t feel right that she hadn’t cried, or that she doesn’t feel firmly one foot in front of the other on the mommy track right now._

“You know, Elizabeth, it’s a journey,” her mother tells her. “All these books can say whatever they want to. There was a moment for me. Maybe there won’t be for you; maybe you’re different.”

Betty watches as her mother pauses, fingers idly tapping against the knitting in her lap. She’s tried knitting once or twice herself, but it’s always frustrated her - she’s a stitch dropper, and she never really knows what to do when that happens. “I used to think you were like me, Betty - and maybe you are, in some ways. But the more that I think about it, the more I realize that you aren’t. Don’t kid yourself into thinking there’s one way to do this or one way to feel - if only it were so simple. My way will not be yours.”

Her mother’s hand comes to her chin then, grasping and wiggling it lightly, and Betty laughs because she knows that her decidedly unfunny mother had intended for that last part to be some kind of joke.

And it’s nice, Betty thinks, being able to talk to her mom about this now, being able to feel maybe more than she ever has before, that her mom is really _her mom._

But it’s something of a horror story, too, that it’s taken her nearly three decades for her and Alice Cooper to finally get to this place of careful understanding and kinship; that if this is her history, then maybe she has no choice but to repeat it, whether she wants to or not.

 

* * *

 

His birthday falls on a Wednesday.

And, in one of a handful of times in nearly two weeks, they’re all woken by the sound of something other than Juliet’s wails.

But those follow, predictably, a heartbeat of a moment after.

“Sorry,” Jughead whispers, and in the darkness she catches him swiping his thumb over his screen before stumbling out of bed and into the hall.

As Betty cradles Juliet in her arms, lowly murmuring little _‘shhs’_ to her as she pats at the baby’s back, she thinks how she’d really like to slap whoever it is on the phone that unilaterally decided today was the day to wake her entire family up while they’d for once, all been peacefully sleeping.

“It’s okay,” she whispers to Juliet. “I know, they’re rude, right? They’re so rude.”

With one hand, Betty reaches for the pink unicorn sitting on her nightstand and waves it in front of Juliet’s face in distraction. “It’s okay,” she says again. “It’s okay. Want me to go punch them?”

 _I probably shouldn’t have said that,_ she thinks as Jughead pushes the door open.

“So, um, I have to go in.”

_“What?”_

“I know,” he says, holding his hands up pitifully. “Not for long. The servers crashed last night and they need my backup drive.”

“You’re working today?” Betty asks. There’s an edge of panic in her voice, and she’s unsure of why it’s there. “You’re still on leave. And it’s your birthday.”

Which, she knows better than anyone, is never an excuse or an out when it comes to him.

“I’m not,” he says quickly. “I’m just going to work to drop off the drive. There and back, I promise. An hour at the most.”

“You could send it to them,” Betty says, voice ticking up in helpfulness. “I mean, isn’t that the whole point of email?”

Jughead sighs. “There’s a terabyte of stuff in there.”

“Oh.”

“I won’t go if you don’t want me to,” he tells her. “If you need me here, then I’m here. I’ll figure something out. Just say the word, Betts, and I’ll tell them to fu- fudge off.”

It’s on the tip of her tongue to take him up on that, and emphatically, too. This is New York, and there are courier services and guys on Craigslist that will do just about anything for a buck. There are probably carrier pigeons, too, if they looked hard enough.

But she knows him. He’ll sit here figuring out a way to make it all work, and it’ll end up taking longer than if he’d just dropped off the drive himself.

“It’s fine,” Betty says, raising her voice up an octave for emphasis. “It’s fine - we’ll be fine.”

With Juliet in her arms, she watches as he dashes around their room, first with a toothbrush in his mouth, then with his t-shirt swapped out for something with a collar.

“I’ll be back soon,” Jughead says, and with a kiss planted on both their foreheads, the count goes down from three to two.

 

* * *

 

With Juliet perched in her rocker and in plain sight, Betty throws her hair up in a ponytail. Truthfully, she’d really rather shower, but she’s not going to with no one else here to watch the baby while she does.

The ponytail is the least she can do in some semblance of an effort to feel like herself in a room and an apartment that has exploded with all things pastel pink, and blue, and baby.

And, Betty thinks as she gazes in the mirror, turning from right cheek to left - she looks more like herself this way, too. She hasn’t had the time or frankly, the energy to put up her hair these past few weeks, but now, Juliet is quiet and cooing in her rocker, and she’s not hungry or fussy or crying.

Betty does a double take when she looks over to the pink rocker. They’ve had it for a few months now, since the baby shower Veronica had thrown for her that had ended with the entire back-half of a limo filled with gifts, but it still surprises her when she sees something in it now.

It’d sat there empty for so long, and now it simply isn’t. Now, there’s Juliet, waving her loosely-curled fists around and gurgling at the air.

 _She looks more like Jughead,_ Betty thinks as she looks from her face in the mirror to Juliet’s. Those are her eyes and that’s definitely her chin, but the rest of her is really all him.

“You’re very beautiful,” she says quietly, hand gently bouncing on Juliet’s foot. “Did you know that? You’re very beautiful.”

Betty sighs as she thinks about the overly-tired man now likely stuck on a crowded subway on his birthday, the one that Juliet looks so much like.

It’s not like they ever do much on this day, anyhow, she tells herself. There’s usually some birthday sex, which they both know won’t be happening this year, some kind of burger, and the movie, which isn’t happening either, at least not with Archie and Veronica. They’ll watch something here if they have the time and if they can both stay awake, they’ve already said, but they’re not going out today.

But it feels wrong, Betty thinks as she makes faces down at Juliet. It’s Jughead’s first birthday with Juliet - it’s the first time Juliet will celebrate her own dad’s birthday - and doing the usual, minus sex and _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_ , just doesn’t feel right.

Today should be bigger than the usual, even if in some small way.

“Do you want to do something special for Dad?” Betty asks, staring down into the rocker.

No response.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

 

* * *

 

Because there’s nothing that she can’t get brought straight to her door if she throws in the extra bucks for it, Betty sends out for minced beef, hamburger buns, and paint.

It’s a beautiful day, one that sends sunlight flooding into their windows in excess and that has her poking her nose out through the crack to sniff at the air on the other side of the glass. Betty thinks about opening it fully, but decides against it - Juliet hasn’t had her shots yet, and even though she thinks it’s probably just fine, as much as she loves it, she’s also very aware that they live in a very filthy, grimy city.

Still, she misses it - running, moving and swinging her arms in the breeze, feeling her feet against something other than the wood of her apartment floors.

There’s a whole world out there.

But then again, there’s a whole world right in here, too.

“Okay,” Betty says brightly as she turns away from the window, more so for herself than Juliet, who doesn’t yet understand her, “let’s do this.”

Betty sets everything up carefully - the paper plate with blue paint dolloped onto it, the sheet of printer paper, the wet wipes, and the little duck-onesie wearing baby she knows already means the world and more to the man she can’t even call by name yet.

Carefully taking Juliet’s hands, first the right, then the left, Betty dips them into the paint before slowly stamping each onto the paper in her hand.

“I think he’ll like that,” Betty says quietly, fingers gently holding Juliet’s wrists to keep them from her mouth.

Then, moving from instinct when she catches it out of the corner of her eye, Betty reaches for the folded paper hanging off the coffee table and presses the faded remnants of the paint on Juliet’s hand to the back of the receipt.

It isn’t her birthday, but she is Juliet’s mother. She figures she deserves a copy, too.

 

* * *

 

He comes home an hour and thirty-seven minutes later. Betty hasn’t been timing him, but she’d noticed the time when he’d left, and she’s in plain view of the clock on the microwave when he returns; it’s hard not to do the math.

“I’m sorry,” Jughead says before he’s even one foot in the door and with the same breathlessness he has when he’s taken the stairs two per jump. “The subway stalled and the hard drive glitched, and - I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“The world out there is hell.”

“Jug, really. It’s okay,” she repeats. “Everything is fine. We’re alive.”

She’d meant it as something of a joke, but that exhaustion is back in her voice again, heavy and weighing down the lightness she tries to instill into it.

“How was everything?” he asks, brushing past her to the sink. Betty thinks it’s some kind of illusion when she sees him scrub his hands with soap twice, but as she blinks rapidly, she realizes that it isn’t.

“Juliet made you something.” The shyness in her own voice surprises her.

“Oh yeah?” Jughead asks, crouching slightly to scoop the baby from her arms into his as he speaks softly to the gurgling bundle, in the midst of blowing an admittedly impressive spit-bubble. She thinks Juliet might be a great bubble-gum blower one day, which is something she’s never been able to do. “And what might that be?

“Birthday card,” Betty says simply, quickly padding over to the desk where she’d left the page to dry, before holding it out to him.

She watches as his mouth slowly turns up in a smile, arms idly and instinctively bouncing Juliet lightly as he reads over the three words she’d neatly penned below the little blue handprints.

_Happy birthday, Dad!_

Betty doesn’t know when they’d decided this because it hadn’t been something they’d sat down and hammered out, but it’s never Daddy, and it’s never Mommy when they’re referring to each other.

It’s just Mom and Dad.

“Well, look at that,” Jughead says softly, shifting Juliet over to one arm as he takes the page, fingers curling around the edges so carefully, as if he were reaching for Venetian glass and not just a piece of printer paper. “What a little artist.” Then, to her - “we had paint?”

Betty shrugs. “We ordered it,” she says, mind lingering on the two very different iterations of the same word. She’s been a _‘we’_ with him for over a decade now, and used the two-letter word to refer to the little team that they make up countless times.

But, the we she’d just used is an entirely different _‘we’,_ Betty realizes, one that refers not to a boyfriend-and-girlfriend pair, or even husband-and-wife, but now, a mother and a daughter.

 _We_ , she turns over in her mind. _We._

“Ah,” Jughead says, nodding in understanding. “Thanks, Ju.”

On cue, Juliet coos, waving a loose fist in the air in approval of the nickname. Betty knows it’s a coincidence more than anything else, because according to the books she’s read, it’s highly unlikely the less-than-two-week-old really recognizes the play on her own name.

As it is, Juliet doesn’t even know where her ears are.

But still, Betty thinks - Juliet’s never waved like that for her when she’s called her name. She’s cried, and she’s blinked, and she’s spat up in her face once, but she’s never waved.

As Jughead rocks Juliet in his arms, so gently that she can barely tell he’s doing it, she wonders if maybe, it’s something in her voice. She remembers how just the sound of her own mother’s voice would be enough to jolt her to her core and chill her to the bone when she was younger; when she’d been caught with her hand sneaking into the fridge after midnight, or when she’d returned home from Archie’s with mud caked on her face. When Alice Cooper had said her name in that sharp, commanding voice, everything in her had chilled and run frigid.

She wants to be stern when the time calls for it, firm when she needs to be, but she never wants Juliet to fear the sound of her voice. She doesn’t want cold and ice, but Betty wonders if it’s simply built into her voice - the voice her own mother had given her.

With a shake of her head, she brushes off the thought. It’s his birthday today, the one day in the year he truly calls his own, and so she pulls up the best smile she can muster instead.

And, she doesn’t even need to try hard at it - as Jughead tugs off an old take-out pizza menu from the fridge and moves Juliet’s handprints under the magnet instead, all the while murmuring nonsense to the baby - it comes to her more than easily.

“Thank you,” he tells her softly, pressing a knowing kiss to her cheek when she joins him at the fridge.

Betty threads her hand through the crook of his elbow, quickly wiping off a line of drool on the edge of Juliet’s little lip before bringing her own tired head down onto his shoulder.

“Happy birthday, Jug.”

 

* * *

 

They dress her up as a bumblebee.

In recent years, they’ve gone to Veronica’s for Halloween, a tradition that Betty thinks Veronica started around the time she really and truly began to miss the debauchery of college.

“We can do something else this year,” Veronica had offered, and to Veronica’s credit, she’d genuinely looked like she’d meant it. “Dinner and a scary movie? Or a kid’s movie? Or just dinner? Really, B, we just want to spend time with you guys.”

But Betty knows how Veronica loves her once a year, girls-and-Veronica-gone-wild booze fest, she knows how much Archie loves parading around in fig leaves and no clothes, even though Veronica has only gone as Eve once, and so, she’d politely shook her head. “Maybe next year,” she’d said. “We can get a sitter then.”

So somewhere uptown on the west side, there’s debauchery thanks at least in part to her, and downtown, there’s a newly vaccinated newborn in a bumblebee costume.

“You sure you’re okay with not going to Veronica’s this year?” Jughead asks, holding out her coat to her before shrugging on his own. She thinks about telling him not to wear it - there’s a visible tear near the shoulder he’d gotten from brushing too hard against a door frame and it’s cold out tonight. The leather is worn and scuffed now from years of throwing it over chairs, the zippers faded and dinged, but she doesn’t have the heart to tell him to put something else on when he loves this jacket as much as he does, when it’s so much a part of him as it is.

Instead, she reminds herself to find a good tailor.

“Yeah,” Betty says, throwing in a slight shrug for emphasis. “It’s not like the party’s any place for a baby.”

“Not for another twenty-one years at least,” he agrees, laughing lightly. “Just wanted to check.”

Jughead carries the stroller down the stairs while she takes point on Juliet, strapped to her chest and blowing bubbles onto her shirt.

 _He looks comfortable,_ Betty thinks as he carefully buckles Juliet into the stroller. Handsome, a natural, and not at all like the ball and bundle of nerves she feels like right now. There’s so much grime on the streets, and the air in this city is really so filthy. And, all someone needs to do is look at Juliet funny, and she could come down with a cold. She has her shots now, but she’s still just a baby with a baby-sized immune system.

But she does her best to brush off all those worries. As it is, he doesn’t look particularly worried pushing Juliet in her stroller down the street, and he’s a worrier. Not like she is, but a worrier nonetheless.

It’s a longer walk than she remembers it being in the past, but they’d wanted the first real walk they took Juliet on to be to this place. And when the arch comes into view, Betty smiles.

She’s glad they made the long walk over.

“Jug?” she begins, tucking her coat under her as she sits beside him on the bench. The wood’s a little worn now, but it’s still the same bench they’ve come back to time and again, and that alone is enough to fill her with warmth.

“Hmm?” She smiles at the sound - she thinks she could listen to him hum like that forever.

“When did you start feeling like a dad?” Betty asks, voice smaller than she’d intended. “Like that feeling that you’re just… her dad - when did that come to you?”

He’s quiet as he considers her question, lip twisting the way it always does when he’s thinking deeply, and hand lazily pushing the stroller back and forth. “When I first saw you holding her, I guess,” Jughead says eventually, softly. “There was that moment - I put my hand on her head for the first time, and it just hit me - that we’d be responsible for her for the rest of our lives. That we’d be responsible for teaching her to read and write; we’d be responsible for making sure she becomes a good person and for making sure that she knows she’s loved every single day. Honestly, it all made me a little nauseous.”

Betty laughs at that. At least it hadn’t been just her.

“But if there’s a moment I’d have to point to, that would probably be the one. Why?”

Betty sucks in a slow breath before answering. She knows that he won’t judge her - there’s nothing in her life that he’s ever judged her for. He’s been angry with her, sure, but he’s never judged her.

But that still doesn’t make any of this easier to admit.

“I don’t know that I’ve felt that yet,” Betty says quietly. “That mom-feeling - that overwhelming feeling. I feel like her mother, Jug, but I don’t feel like a mom. I don’t even know if that makes sense.”

When her voice trails off, Betty feels his hand press gently against her back. “You know, it doesn’t always happen immediately,” he tells her after a beat. “Says the stuff I read online, but who says any of that is less valid? It happens right away for some people, and it takes others time.”

“It didn’t take you any time,” Betty points out.

Jughead shrugs. “But when have you ever been like me? I mean, you are in a lot of things, but not in this.”

She nudges him lightly. “Not in this? Did we have another baby I’m forgetting about?”

When he smiles, it’s a shy one, and one she hasn’t seen in years. “Do you remember when we first got married?”

“That’s a huge and undefined chuck of time, but sure.”

“That’s kind of my point, actually,” Jughead says, voice laid over a low laugh. “There was that string of holiday shi- stuff we had to go to, remember? The pre-Thanksgiving party at Bill’s house, the gala, the Hanukkah thing at your boss’s house, that Christmas thing - and there was something else, too.”

“The nondescript, non-denominational party at my office,” Betty fills in. There’d been menorahs and Christmas trees and dreidels everywhere.

“Did you know at every single one of those, you called me your boyfriend before correcting to husband?”

Betty frowns. She definitely knows she’d done it once or twice, but she hadn’t realized she’d slipped-up at every single event.

“I didn’t know,” she says slowly.

“Betty, it’s not like I cared. Or care now. It doesn’t bother me, or matter to me. All I meant is that it takes you time.” His hand draws up to her shoulder, gently turning her towards him. “Some people adjust quickly; some don’t. It’s okay that you don’t.” When his hand comes to the end of her ponytail, fingers idly twirling at the uneven strands, Betty allows her eyes to flutter close to the feeling. “It didn’t mean that you loved me any less when you called me your boyfriend instead of your husband. It doesn’t mean that you love Juliet any less just because it’s taking you longer to get to that feeling. It takes you time to step into something new. Sometimes, I think it’s because you’re so careful about everything. You think through everything, down to the minutia and it’s hard for you to just let go and surrender to whatever it is you’re feeling. But that’s what makes you, you.” Betty brings her eyes to his then, unsurprised when she finds only confidence looking back at her. His hand, when he slips it under hers, is warm and feels just like him. “You’ll get there, Betts - you’ve never not found your way.”

Betty breathes in deeply then, relishing in the sensation of cold air filling her lungs as she does. It’s crisp and clear out, and it’s one of those beautiful fall nights that she knows somewhere in her subconscious, she’s been waiting to share with these very people, right here in this place, for a long time, now.

“I love her,” Betty says, voice firm as she runs a fingertip gently down the rounded apple of Juliet’s cheek. “I really love her. More than I can even say.”

“Never doubted it.”

“And I love you. Even though it took me five holiday events to call you the right thing.”

He smiles then, the way he always does when she says those words to him, looking every inch like the boy she’d fallen in love with, and like the man that she loves now. “Betty,” he says quietly, drawing his arm around her shoulders and gently tugging her into the spot that she’s come to know as her own, “I know you do.”

 

* * *

 

The drive back to Riverdale takes them longer than it usually does.

Jughead is typically a ten miles-per-hour over the speed limit kind of driver, and over the years she’s gotten used to that. But this year, he stays firmly five-under.

It doesn’t bother her, though, because it all just feels like flying to her.

Betty spots her mother sitting by the bay window as they turn onto her old street, and by the time they’re pulling up to the driveway, Alice Cooper is already flying out the door with her very pink knitting tossed into Hal Cooper’s hands.

Betty sighs immediately. She didn’t know her father would be here already, and the idea of playing happy-family is immediately exhausting to her already exhausted self.

But, she supposes, her dad has every right to see his granddaughter on her first Thanksgiving in this world as much as the rest of them.

“You look good, Betty,” her mother tells her, unstrapping Juliet from the car seat before she even has the chance to. “The baby weight is falling off quickly!”

Betty supposes her mother had meant it as a compliment, but she reminds herself never to make comments like that to Juliet. “Thanks, mom,” she says simply before stepping out of the car.

“Hal! Help them grab their bags. And don’t drop any of Juliet’s things - you’re a dropper.”

At that, Betty holds back an eye roll. Her parents are divorced, but she doesn’t think her mother has ever let one just go by without sticking it to her father if the opportunity is there.

 

* * *

 

After a day of passing Juliet around to everyone who had just happened to stop by with apple cider or half a pecan pie, Betty finally lets herself breathe when they’re settled into her room later that night.

It’s comforting, she thinks as she draws back the blankets on her old bed. She hasn’t lived in this room for years now, but crawling back into the space where she’d once fended off nightmares and grown from a child into an adult will always put her at least a little at ease.

“Betts,” he whispers over to her, grinning as he jerks a thumb to the corner of the room where her old laundry basket still is. “No air mattress this year.”

At that, she laughs. She really and truly laughs. It’s one that builds from the base of her stomach and bubbles right to her heart, a familiar and foreign feeling all at once, and something that just feels so good.

A baby, she supposes as her shoulder shake, is Alice Cooper’s marker of when it’s finally time to give up the fiction of separate beds.

Betty looks around her room, smiling contentedly at the faded posters tacked onto her walls, the old photos of Archie, Veronica, and Jughead, of her family, lining the corners of her desk and dresser, the overwhelming amount of pink that honestly hadn’t seemed like that much back in the day.

She’d loved this room. She still loves this room - for better or worse, she’d become herself in this room, or at least, she’d started to. The rest of her house might play host to bad memories, and there may be a dining table that they’ll all sit around tomorrow evening and have Thanksgiving dinner at, the same table her parents had signed divorce papers on, but this room has always been hers. Hers to decorate, hers to grow into, hers to find herself in.

She’s always loved this room.

She wonders if Juliet loves hers, or if that’s even possible.

She hopes that when that time comes, Juliet does.

“We should decorate Juliet’s room for Christmas,” Betty says. “You know, make it feel a little more festive. Homey.”

“Okay,” Jughead says slowly, voice faltering over the syllables. “You don’t think her room is homey?”

“No, I do,” Betty says quickly, hand curling over the edge of Juliet’s bassinet. “But I want it to be festive-homey. I just - I don’t know, maybe Christmas lights or something? I want her to feel comfortable there.”

There’s a part of her that wouldn’t even be upset with him if he laughed at her, because the idea of stringing up Christmas lights for a baby who has absolutely no understanding of the concept sounds absurd even to her.

Jughead looks at her, softly and with his head slightly tilted - he’s thinking, Betty can tell; thinking about what she really means, about what she’s feeling, and if and how he can help with any of that.

 _She loves a good man,_ she thinks as he moves towards the mirror over her dresser. She always has.

“How much do you like this picture?” Jughead asks. She squints over at the silver frame he’s holding up at her before frowning as she recognizes the beret-wearing second-grade version of herself smiling toothily within the borders.

 _More like grimacing_ , she corrects internally - she hadn’t quite mastered her own smile at age eight. In fact, she kind of looks like she’s in pain.

“Not much.”

Betty watches as he flips the frame over, carefully shaking out her old class portrait, before tugging out the picture still tucked away into the corner of her mirror. He smiles, boyishly and fondly, as he looks at the photograph in his hand - them, sixteen and beaming at each other some twelve years ago - before placing the old polaroid flat against the glass and locking it into place.

She wonders if those two people in that picture, so young and with so much road ahead of them, could have ever even dreamed wildly and grandly enough to imagine that they’d be here one day - exactly where they started on a cold September morning, and yet, so far from it, too.

“We’ll do the Christmas lights, Betts; first thing when we get back,” Jughead says as he places the frame in front of her before his hand joins hers, gently resting over Juliet. “But I think this is all she needs for it to feel like home - the people who love her.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The references and quotes to Romeo and Juliet are all from Act II, Scene II.
> 
> Title from “Sight of the Sun” by Fun.
> 
> Tumblr - @heavy-lies-the-crown


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